Vinayak Naik, Pushpendra Singh, Amarjeet Singh

IIIT-Delhi

February 12, 2011

Role of ICT Enabled Teaching Practices for

Improved Learning

How do we define ICT enabled teaching?

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What different modules together constitute effective teaching?

We will talk about how we used technologies to aid in some of these modules!

Satisfy so called “digital natives” or “net generation”

Due to their upbringing and experiences with technology, today’s students have particular learning preferences or styles that differ from earlier generations

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Use the tools to make the dissemination and learning more interesting and engaging Most importantly, make our life easier! :)

Share some of our experiences with use of following technologies

Audio recording of lectures Class blogs Wiki for project updates Google code for assignment submission Detecting plagiarism SMS Channel for feedback and announcements Animations to aid visualization Course website/Course management system Coordination using google docs

Used across different classes - Systems Management (1st Semester, class size - 100); Computer Networks (4th Semester, class size - 60), Mobile Computing (5th Semester, class size - 40), Embedded Systems (6th Semester, class size - 20)

Use a simple pocket voice recorder Very positive feedback from students

since they can go back and listen I was apprehensive in the

beginning - who wants to listen to me after the forced lecture is over! :)

A good feedback for me to see how I managed today’s class

Allows me to quantify the improvement over time

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Free to host - blogger, wordpress, … Idea: provide a forum for discussion amongst

students to promote peer-to-peer learning Initial effort but very low maintenance afterwards Students may copy paste, use slangs, grammatical

errors Create a draft blog as a model for students to follow Create a policy around copy paste

Motivating students to participate Initially may come from having some weight in overall

evaluation Once the utility is established, it establishes a

feedback A resource that can grow with each year I also made them write about personal lab

experiences Get them attracted towards the habit of writing

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Easy to install on any server Mandated students to create a wiki

page for their project Update history is maintained by the

tool: Easy to track update time Initial effort in getting it

started, low maintenance afterwards Good exposure to students on how to

create a wiki page Easy coordination amongst students

in the same group

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Very easy to setup online code repository Easy to track progress as the student works on

the code Not possible to setup individual permissions -

Each student will have access to other students’ code

In my case, I do not mind them copy as long as they can explain the code

In-built wiki - project code can be committed and a wiki page can be maintained No maintenance

Tools meant for documents are not accurate for detecting plagiarism in code Moss is a good online tool but it is has its

disadvantages In addition to Moss, we are using SVN log files

to deter and detect plagiarism Student is supposed to create a SVN

repository and commit code in it Code that is copied instantaneously can be

detected SVN logs can be manipulated but it is a non-

trivial effort There are false positives and false negatives

Alternate communication channel with the class Privacy issues of collecting individual phone

numbers Technology not stable for adding large number of

subscribers Not very effective for announcements

Setup a SMS server (open source) and connected a GSM modem

Students could send an encoded SMS to give feedback on each lecture - script to compile the messages to create a summary and send over email automatically

Need to be a bit technology savvy to setup the complete solution Got regular feedback in the beginning from a few

students but it died down eventually - I have to be blamed!

Working on setting up IVR for announcements and feedback this semester

Java applets to show underlying concepts◦ Already available resource◦ Feedback suggests that it is very useful in understanding the concept

◦ Students demand more of them Assignment to develop similar applets :)

Attention level suddenly increases close to 100% Planning to have similar resources for other courses

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Course Management Systems◦ Moodle: open-source, free.

Set up at University/Department level◦ Allows◦ Easy distribution of course resources◦ Submitting course assignments

Deadlines are fixed – late submissions can be disabled

Course Website◦ Can be set up by an individual ◦ Requires minimal knowledge of computers e.g. Google pages

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Given the scale, scheduling is getting tougher Current version of doodle.com schedules one

meeting for multiple participants, we need multiple meetings for multiple participants Use Google spreadsheet to reduce load

Instructor decides all possible timeslots Students on first-come-first-serve basis pick

slots (could be done using a paper on a notice board as well but online is more convenient) No back-n-forth sending of emails As it follows first-come-first-serve policy

from students’ point of view there is no consideration for students’ constraints, but then scheduling is a hard problem

Concluding Remarks

A word of caution: Lots of new technologies around Can be overwhelming for the instructor Can be overwhelming for the students

A few new technologies can be an easy way to impress students that you are up to date with what is happening around :)

Those which are easy to setup and maintain are worth trying to test whether they work for you

Others can be given as a summer internship project to be setup by the students themselves and used in teaching a course in Fall semester